


something stupid

by sara_wolfe



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aziraphale and Crowley are Adam Young's Parents (Good Omens), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22523440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_wolfe/pseuds/sara_wolfe
Summary: “This is quite possibly the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”Standing in the doorway to the bookshop, an infant’s car seat dangling from one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other, Crowley shot Aziraphale a disarming grin. “Aw, c’mon, Angel. I’ve done stupider things than this.”
Relationships: Aziraphale & Adam Young (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 161
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019





	something stupid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ImpishTubist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/gifts).



> For the prompt: _Crowley kidnapping either Adam Young or Baby B to raise them._

“This is quite possibly the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”

Standing in the doorway to the bookshop, an infant’s car seat dangling from one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other, Crowley shot Aziraphale a disarming grin. “Aw, c’mon, Angel. I’ve done stupider things than this.”

“Get inside before someone sees you,” Aziraphale snapped, pulling Crowley into the bookshop while looking frantically up and down the street, like he thought the forces of Heaven and Hell were going to jump out at them from the shadows. “Crowley, what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Crowley admitted, with a shrug. “Maybe, ‘hey, it’d be great if the world didn’t end in a decade or so’.”

Aziraphale stared at Crowley, not sure if he’d heard him correctly. “Is that - is that the Antichrist?” he demands, aghast. 

“Of course it’s the Antichrist!” Crowley looks confused, first, and then offended. “What, you thought I’d just nicked some random baby off the street?”

“I didn’t know what you’d done!” Aziraphale threw his hands up in disbelief as he stalked away from Crowley, away from the baby - Satan’s baby. “I can’t believe you stole the Antichrist,” he shot back over his shoulder as he started an impromptu reorganization of his entire shelving system. It shouldn’t take long, just a few weeks, and then maybe by then Satan’s baby would no longer be in his bookshop. “Crowley, what were you thinking?”

“You asked me that already,” Crowley pointed out, from where he’d made himself comfortable on the couch he’d summoned into the middle of the room, the rather immense piece of furniture defying several laws of physics in order to fit in and around the bookshelves. He was lounging on the couch, glass of liquor dangling from his hand, and using his foot to carefully rock the Antichrist to sleep in his carrier. “You’re repeating yourself, Angel.”

“Because your first answer was ludicrous,” Aziraphale told him. “Crowley, you can’t just stop the Apocalypse!”

“Why not?” Crowley asked, and the utter reasonableness in his tone had Aziraphale stopping in his tracks. 

“Because-because-” he stammered, staring down at the book he was holding as if it might give him the words he was so desperately searching for. The pristine first-edition of Hamlet offered no revelations. “Because you can’t,” he finally insisted, re-shelving the book and grabbing another to stare at.

“Well, I did,” Crowley retorted, “so obviously I can.” He gave Aziraphale the same charming smile that had gotten them into so much trouble over the centuries. “Angel, you of all people can’t really tell me that you want the Apocalypse. That you want the Earth and all its wonders - all its people - to be destroyed.”

“But it’s the Great Plan!” Aziraphale protested. 

“I’m a demon,” Crowley reminded him. “Defying the Great Plan is a pretty big part of the job description.”

“But not a part of mine.” Abandoning his reorganization as a lost cause, Aziraphale wound his way back through the bookshelves to join Crowley on the couch. “I’m not like you, Crowley. I can’t just disobey my orders whenever I want.” Summoning a tumbler into his hand, he poured himself a generous portion of Crowley’s scotch and downed it in a couple of quick swallows. “I don’t even know why you came here, tonight.”

On the other end of the couch, Crowley was suddenly, suspiciously silent. Aziraphale looked up from his glass to see Crowley facing away from him, bent over the infant carrier in order to fuss over the Antichrist. Aziraphale watched him for a few seconds, worrying at the baby’s blanket, before he reached out and smacked Crowley’s hands away.

“Stop that,” he scolded. “You want to wake him up? Heaven only knows what he’s capable of if you upset him.”

“He’s not going to wake up,” Crowley muttered, but he slouched back against the couch cushions, crossing his arms over his chest with a scowl. He still wouldn’t meet Aziraphale’s eyes. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale pressed, watching him closely, “Crowley, why _did_ you come here tonight? This isn’t exactly part of our usual Arrangement.”

“You’re right, I should probably go,” Crowley started, half-standing as he reached for the infant carrier, but Aziraphale stopped him with a hand on his wrist. 

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “Crowley, please, won’t you just tell me?”

Crowley was silent for several long seconds, and then finally, “I think Armageddon is a mistake.”

Aziraphale sucked in a sharp breath, half expecting a bolt of holy fire to come through the ceiling to strike Crowley down. Crowley, for his part, looked afraid but defiant. 

“Armageddon is a mistake,” he repeated, louder, like he was daring God to smite him for his blasphemy. “It’s one thing to make plans to destroy the Earth when it’s brand new and there’s nothing on it, but it’s different, now. There’s people, and dolphins, and ducks - the ducks don’t deserve to have their planet wiped out. None of them do.”

“But why come here?” Aziraphale asked, for a third time. “Why come to me with this?”

Crowley jerked his shoulder in a shrug. “Be awfully hard to hide a baby from you for the next decade,” he said. “Besides, why wouldn’t I come here? You’re my best friend.”

Aziraphale blinked, genuinely taken aback by the emotion in Crowley’s voice, the casual way he admitted his feelings. Feelings that he, himself, couldn’t even think about without developing anxiety. 

“Do you really think we can do it?” he asked instead, once again shoving his emotions down into some deep dark corner of himself where he wouldn’t have to think about them. “Do you think we can raise the Antichrist so he won’t want to destroy the world?”

“Only one way to find out,” Crowley responded. 

“And how do we know we’ll be able to do this?” Aziraphale asked, warming to his topic. “Crowley, do you even know anything about raising a baby?”

“Well, no,” Crowley admitted. “But, look at him, Angel! He’s so tiny compared to regular humans. How hard could this possibly be?”

* * *

Later, both Crowley and Aziraphale would come to regret that comment. Deeply, deeply regret it. But for now, they barely had the time to rest, let alone regret. 

They’d named the baby Adam (”We have to call him something, Angel, and he’s the first of his kind, too”) and set up a room for him in Crowley’s flat. They’d gone shopping for baby supplies - the human way, at Aziraphale’s insistence. 

“If we’re going to raise him as a human,” Aziraphale had said, firmly, “then we need to do things the human way. That means no summoning things whenever we need them.”

Not that Crowley had minded going shopping with Aziraphale; it had actually been fun, wandering around the shops and watching Aziraphale cuddle Adam. He hadn’t even minded standing in the impossibly long lines while the understaffed shop tried to cope with only one open register (a little demonic invention he was particularly proud of). And he’d convinced Aziraphale to let him use a small miracle to send the packages back to the flat ahead of them, since it would have been even more suspicious for people to see them loading everything into a car clearly not meant to hold that much stuff. 

They’d gone back to Crowley’s flat, and gotten all of Adam’s new things set up: crib, changing table, rocking chair, and an amount of stuffed animals that might charitably been called excessive. There’d been other things too, diapers, and wash cloths, and every little thing the shop assistants had insisted was absolutely essential to raising a newborn baby. So many things that they began spilling out of Adam’s designated room and rapidly encroaching on the rest of Crowley’s space. It was a problem that he could have solved easily with a miracle or two - if he hadn’t promised Aziraphale. 

“Who knew babies needed so much space?” Aziraphale asked, wonderingly, staring in stunned shock at the veritable mountain of baby things filling the room and beyond. “You know, I don’t remember it looking like this much stuff when we were in the shop.”

“The shop’s bigger,” Crowley told him. “Makes everything look smaller by comparison.”

“Well, we can’t move Adam into the bookshop with me,” Aziraphale told him. “I’ve got even less space there than you do.” Shaking his head in disbelief, he wondered out loud, “How do humans do this over and over again?”

“Usually by finding a different place to live,” Crowley said, without thinking about it. 

Aziraphale’s eyes positively lit up with glee. “Crowley, that’s it!” he said, excitedly. 

“You want me to find a new place to live?” Crowley asked. 

“Well, not just you,” Aziraphale replied. 

Crowley felt like he was missing something. “Well, who else-” He trailed off at the beaming smile on Aziraphale’s face, the barely-restrained eagerness. “Oh, no. We can’t, Angel. We’ve spent the last six thousand years going to great lengths to hide our Arrangement from both our sides, and now you want to throw all that hard work out the window by moving in together?”

“How else am I going to help you raise Adam?” Aziraphale pointed out. “This will all go much smoother if we’re both living in the same place.”

“What about discretion?” Crowley argued. “What about being careful and not getting caught?”

“We’ll still be careful,” Aziraphale hastened to assure him. “Just as we’ve always been. But I really do think this will be what’s best for Adam. Our best chance at raising him to be a normal boy with no aspirations of destroying the Earth.”

Crowley heaved a sigh, knowing when he’d been defeated. “I suppose you have some kind of idea of where we should live, too?” he asked. 

“As a matter of fact,” Aziraphale told him, “I have always wanted to live by the sea.”

* * *

They settled on a cottage at the seaside. Well, the realtor called it a cottage; Crowley, personally, had seen smaller castles. But, it had more than enough space for their little Antichrist to flourish, and that was all that mattered. 

Four spacious bedrooms, a library big enough to house all of Aziraphale’s books and then some, a garden in the back for Adam to run around in when he was older - the house had everything they were looking for. It even had an overgrown garden that Crowley couldn’t wait to get his hands on. 

It was perfect.

* * *

Despite the impression he gave off, Crowley really did love his plants. He loved the quiet, meditative feeling in the early morning when he goes through his greenhouse and the gardens, tending to his plants. He loved the little thrill of pride every time someone complimented his gardens. He especially loveed yelling at his plants and watching them tremble in fear (and Aziraphale could just stop with his talk of “unhealthy coping mechanisms” and “indicative of old traumas” all right, because that’s not what he’s doing, Aziraphale was wrong, completely wrong, and which one of them influenced Freud, again?). Point being, Crowley really did love his plants. 

Crowley does not love grass. 

He’d never been responsible for a lawn full of grass before moving with Aziraphale to their house in the South Downs. There wasn’t a lot of grass running around Soho, after all, outside of St. James Park, and it had always been lushly green and vibrant with life whenever he was there. And he’d assumed, upon seeing the stretch of yellowish-green grass out front, that taking care of this lawn would be just like the rest of his plants. 

The realtor had apologized for the unkempt state of the lawn, muttering something about the previous owners, but had quickly reassured them that all it needed was a little TLC to restore it to its former glory. And Crowley had just as quickly reassured her that he would have the lawn looking better than ever before. 

He had been wrong. So very wrong. 

Grass, he discovered, wasn’t like the plants he was used to dealing with. His plants were young, malleable, easily intimidated. Grass was old and immune to his demonic charms. Grass weathered the changing seasons to come back every spring, survived fire and flood alike, laid down deep, complex roots that weren’t about to give quarter to anyone. Grass had been there long before humans had ever existed, and would be there long after they ceased to be even a blip on the planet. 

Grass, quite frankly, did not give two shits about Crowley or his thoughts on how it should be. 

Crowley would have been impressed - if he hadn’t been busy declaring all-out war on his new nemesis.

* * *

Crowley’s other nemesis was named Karen. 

Karen was the head of the village association. Karen’s main responsibility was ensuring that everyone who lived in the village abided by the rules the association laid down. Karen’s main stickler was the state of people’s lawns. Therefore, Karen did not like Crowley. 

Crowley could have lived with dislike. In fact, he would have thrived from it. But Karen didn’t just stop at dislike. Karen leveraged every bit of power she had in the village association to levy sanctions and fines against him for the state of his lawn. She insulted his gardening ability. And worst of all, she’d made Aziraphale unhappy. And that could not stand. 

In a way, Crowley figured, he’d brought this on himself. One of his few acts in America had been the creation of homeowner associations, organizations that existed supposedly to help the people who lived in their communities, but instead served to make everyone miserable. He’d even earned a commendation for it. But he’d never foreseen people in England deciding to adopt the idea to torture themselves - and by extension, him. 

So he’d tried, at first, to be patient when Karen had knocked on their door and informed him that his yard was not up to association standards. He’d politely replied that they’d just moved in and he was sure he’d have the yard back in shape in no time. He’d also assumed that would be the end of their interactions. 

As with too many things recently, Crowley was wrong about this. 

Karen became a near-constant presence in his life, stopping by the cottage almost every day to tut sadly about the lawn that refused to turn green, no matter what Crowley tried. She’d purse her lips, giving Crowley a Look that suggested that she regarded him as little more than a disobedient child. She’d stare down at the yellowing grass for several long, silent minutes, like she expected it to bloom into life under her watchful gaze. And then she’d heave a deep sigh, fix Crowley with yet another Look, and remind him in her polite, icy tone that he’d incurred yet another fine for the month, and was facing another next month if he didn’t get his situation under control. 

Despite his hatred, Crowley was grudgingly impressed. She’d have made a fine demon.

* * *

Luckily, the rest of their neighbors were much more reasonable. About half a dozen of them had young children and were more than happy to lend their expertise when it came to raising babies. They even had a weekly parents’ group that Aziraphale was more than happy to join - and host monthly in their house while somehow forgetting to tell Crowley each and every time. But he looked so happy that Crowley couldn’t even pretend to be angry. 

“It’s so good of you to take in your nephew,” one of the mothers - Crowley thought her name was Martha - said, cooing down at Adam in his arms with a sappy smile on her face. “You and Ezra, coming together to raise an orphaned baby - it’s so romantic!”

Crowley choked, feeling his face burn. “I-I don’t know if I’d put it that way,” he stammered. No matter how much he might want to. 

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about anyone around here giving you grief about it, sweetheart,” Martha said, conspiratorially, patting Crowley on the arm. “Besides, you two aren’t fooling anyone.”

“We aren’t?” Crowley asked, weakly. 

Martha just smiled at him again before wandering away to talk to Aziraphale on the other side of the room, leaving Crowley staring down at Adam in stunned shock. The baby blinked up at him. 

“We’re fooling everyone, aren’t we?” Crowley asked.

The baby had no answer.

* * *

After seeing the last of their neighbors out the door, Aziraphale shut the door with a happy sigh, turning around to regard the empty room behind him. The too-empty room, come to think of it. Where were Crowley and Adam?

Poking around the house, he finally found them in the one place that, once he thought about it, should have been the first place he looked: Crowley’s beloved glass-walled greenhouse. Crowley was stretched out on the battered leather sofa in the center of the room, sound asleep, Adam lying on his chest. Aziraphale had to bite back a smile at the sight of the two of them. 

“Crowley,” he said, instead, reaching out to jostle Crowley’s shoulder. “Crowley, everyone’s gone.”

Crowley blinked sleepily up at him, one had curling around Adam as he slowly sat up. “Angel?”

“Everyone’s gone,” Aziraphale repeated. “You can come out of hiding, now.”

“Wasn’t hiding,” Crowley protested, his cheeks tinged faintly pink. “Just spending some one-on-one time with the munchkin, here.”

Now fully awake, Adam babbled a string of nonsense, curling his fingers tightly around Crowley’s shirt. Crowley smiled down at the baby, bouncing him in his arms and making him giggle. 

“Not to belabor the obvious,” Aziraphale pointed out, “but the whole point of hosting the parents’ group over here is for Adam to get to spend some time with other children.”

“You’ll have more parents’ groups,” Crowley told him. “And Adam will have plenty of time to play with the other children when I’m gone.”

“When you’re gone?” Aziraphale echoed, feeling suddenly very confused. “Crowley, are you planning on going somewhere?”

Crowley grimaced, looking uncomfortable. “Hell got a hold of me a couple hours ago,” he said. “They’re sending me on a job; I leave in the morning. Don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Could be a few days, could be a few months.”

Aziraphale stared at him in shock. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded. 

“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Crowley dragged a hand through his hair, shoulders slumping slightly. “Besides, you looked like you were having fun talking to Martha and that other one. I didn’t want to ruin your afternoon when there was nothing you could do about it.”

“But I-” Aziraphale broke off, unable to put what he was really feeling into words. He was hurt, and a little angry, and more than a little scared at the thought of whatever Hell had planned for Crowley, once he was somewhere Aziraphale couldn’t protect him. “What about Adam?” he tried, changing tacks. “We’re supposed to be taking care of him, together.”

“We’re also supposed to be keeping him off Heaven and Hell’s radars,” Crowley pointed out, “which means that if Hell tells me to jump, I can’t very well say no. Can’t risk them getting suspicious; not now.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Aziraphale conceded, reluctantly. “Just, promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Which one of us got locked in the Bastille for a bite to eat, again?” Crowley asked, teasingly. “I promise, Angel, I’ll be careful.”

* * *

Aziraphale would never - _never_ \- ask Crowley to be less careful, to risk himself while he was on a job for Hell. But over six months without a word? Without anything to let them know that he was still okay while he was working for Hell, that he was safe and unharmed? 

Aziraphale would have given a great many things for simply a reassuring whisper. 

But as worried as he was, he tried his best to not let Adam pick up on what he was really feeling. The boy grew stronger every day, and not just physically. He hadn’t yet shown any overt displays of his powers, but he was so sensitive to Aziraphale’s thoughts and emotions that there was no doubt that he was at least strongly attuned to the occult. And the last thing Aziraphale wanted was to inadvertently upset Adam with his worries and fears. 

So he smiled, and he laughed, and he tried to keep things going as normally as possible for Adam’s sake. He couldn’t let himself do anything else. 

He’d spun a tale to his parents’ group about Crowley being unexpectedly being called away on business - although he was careful to stay vague on just what that business actually was. He was sure that more than a couple of their neighbors now thought that Crowley was into something shady and illegal, as a result, but better than raising suspicions by forgetting exactly which story he’d been telling them. 

But whatever they might have thought, none of his neighbors had shown the slightest hesitation in showing up day after day to check in on him and Adam, to give them comfort and company and make sure they were never alone for very long. It was exactly the very best kind of humanity that Aziraphale had wanted Adam to experience and be influenced by. 

They were alone tonight though, just him and Adam and his wayward thoughts. Adam had been restless all day long, refusing to eat or sleep, just all around fussy and upset. Aziraphale couldn’t really blame him. He wanted to give into his fears, let himself get fussy and upset, too. 

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do anything other than pace the length of the greenhouse while Adam cried in his arms, hoping that Crowley had imbued enough of himself into his plants for Adam to sense and be soothed by. 

“Dada, dada, dada…” The litany of Adam’s newest word, sobbed into Aziraphale’s shoulder, broke his heart. _Dada_ was reserved almost exclusively for the picture of Crowley that Aziraphale showed him, and Aziraphale acted to be able to give Adam what he wanted. 

“I know, sweetheart,” he soothed, as he turned on his heel to make yet another circuit of the room, “I want your dada to come home, too.”

Then, he stopped and stared at the doorway, and at Crowley leaning against the door jamb, a tired smile on his face. 

“Why, Angel,” Crowley quipped, “I didn’t know you cared so much.”

“Crowley, you’re home.” Aziraphale was so relieved, he couldn’t even be slightly irritated at Crowley teasing him. “Are you all right?” he demanded, anxiously. 

“More or less,” Crowley told him. 

Crossing the distance between them, he held his arms out to Adam, scooping him up and promptly holding him close as Adam snuggled happily against his chest. Then, he surprised Aziraphale by freeing an arm and wrapping it around Aziraphale’s shoulders, pulling him into a loose hug. 

“Crowley, what-”

“I know this isn’t what we usually do,” Crowley interrupted him, voice muffled from where he had his head pressed against the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, “but I just - I need this right now.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, wrapping his arms around Crowley in response. He could feel tremors running through Crowley’s lanky frame, and he rubbed his hand up and down Crowley’s back to try and comfort him. “You can have whatever you need,” he assured him. 

“Just this,” Crowley said, still holding on tightly. “Just need to know that you and Adam are safe.”

They held each other for a few minutes more, only parting reluctantly when Adam started fussing again. 

“He’s probably tired,” Aziraphale told Crowley. “I’m afraid neither of us has been getting much sleep, lately. And it is rather late,” he added, glancing down at his watch to see it was already after midnight.

“It’s not just late,” Crowley said, after a moment. “It’s officially Adam’s first birthday.”

“Is it?” Aziraphale checked his watch again, surprised to see the date he hadn’t really registered until now. “Well, how about that?”

“We did it, Angel,” Crowley told him, as they carried Adam down the hall to put him to bed. “We made it through the first year.”

“Only ten more to go,” Aziraphale reminded him. “If only they’re all like this one.”

“I think we’ll be okay, Angel,” Crowley told him. “The three of us, I think we’ll be okay.”

(And they were.)


End file.
